He appeared not to have heard her. An old church with windows cemented shut was looming on the left-hand side, with a long gravel path beside it, disappearing into scrubland.
‘This is it coming up now,’ he advised her quietly.
Isserley looked in the rear-view mirror. The nearest car was perhaps a hundred yards behind her. If she could just bring herself to step on the accelerator, and then slow down at much shorter notice than usual, she could, by the time it caught up, be safely parked in a layby, windows opaque.
She flipped the icpathua toggle.
‘Turn left here, I said!’ the hitcher yelled. ‘Left!’
Panic rising up in her like a gas through a liquid, she misjudged the gears of her car and yanked at them with a stomach-churning braying. In the same moment, she glanced down at the passenger seat. The trousers of the baldhead’s overalls, she realized now, were as thick as cowhide and covered in an extra yellow layer of something resembling tarpaulin. The icpathua needles had simply failed to make an impression.
She felt a sudden stab of pain in her side. It was the point of the Stanley knife, digging into her flesh through the thin fabric of her top.
‘Yes! Yes!’ she hissed anxiously, flipping the indicator toggle up and turning into the path he wanted. Gravel clattered under the wheels and thumped loudly against the belly of the chassis. Her hands wrenched at the steering wheel, overcompensating for the sudden turn, and with every heaving breath she felt the sting of the blade in her side.
‘O?, OK!’ she cried.
He removed the blade and, with his free hand, reached over to steady the steering wheel. His grip was firm but gentle, as if he were teaching her something about driving. His hand was twice the size of hers.
‘Please think… about this,’ panted Isserley.
He didn’t reply, but removed his hand from the steering wheel, evidently satisfied that she was doing an adequate job now. The car was puttering through a neglected landscape of low scrub and the rotted remains of hay-bales. Up ahead, a cluster of cheap purpose-built farm huts loomed, skeletons of fragmented concrete and twisted steel. The A9 had all but disappeared from the rear-view mirror, peeping through indistinctly like a distant river.
‘Turn right where you see that pile of tyres,’ the hitcher instructed her. ‘Then stop the car.’
Isserley did as she was told. They had come to rest behind a solid wall three metres high and ten metres long. The rest of the building was gone, but the wall remained.
‘Right,’ said the hitcher.
Isserley had her breathing under control now. She was trying to concentrate all of herself into her head. Only her wits could save her, for she could not run. She, who had once been able to sprint as fast as a lamb. She could not run.
‘I have friends in high places,’ she pleaded.
He laughed again, a short dry sound like a cough.
‘Get out of the car,’ he said.
They each opened a door and stepped out onto the rocky earth. He walked round to her side and closed the driver’s door. He pushed her against the flank of the car. Still holding the Stanley knife in one hand, he took hold of her black cotton top in the other, grabbing a handful of the material and yanking it upwards over her breasts. He was so strong that his wrenching of the bunched-up cloth, trapped under her armpits, almost lifted her off the ground. Hastily she raised her arms and allowed the top to be pulled away.
‘We can have a… a wonderfully pleasurable experience together,’ she offered, cupping her breasts in her gently quaking hands, ‘if you let me.’
Impassive, red-faced, he positioned himself at arm’s length from her. Then, reaching forward, he began to knead her breasts with the hand that wasn’t holding the knife, each breast in turn, repeatedly trapping the nipples between thumb and forefinger, rolling them like pellets of dough.
‘Does that feel good, yeah?’ he said.
‘Mmmm,’ she replied. There was, of course, no feeling in her breasts at all, but there was plenty of feeling in her spine, which he was pressing against the bowed surface of the car. The cold, electrifying sweat of pain and fear prickled on her shoulders.
He kneaded her breasts for an eternity. His breathing and hers mingled, cloudy in the frigid air. Far above, a pale sun came out and reflected off his dome-like head. The car’s engine made a ticking sound as its parts lost heat and were infiltrated by the chilly weather.
Finally, the hitcher let her nipples go and took a step backwards.
‘Get on your knees,’ he said. While Isserley was hastening to obey, he ran his free hand down the central slit of his overalls, snapping the fasteners softly to reveal a surprisingly white singlet inside the filthy black and yellow wrapping. The overalls unfastened all the way to his crotch, yawning open. He pulled out his genitals, furry scrotal bulb and all. He stepped forward so that his penis swayed in front of her face.
He held the Stanley knife to the nape of her neck and let her feel the edge of the blade through her hair.
‘I don’t wanna feel no teeth, understand?’ he said.
His penis was grossly distended, fatter and paler than a human’s, with a purplish asymmetrical head. At its tip was a small hole like the imperfectly-closed eye of a dead cat.
‘I understand,’ she said.
After a minute with his urine-flavoured flesh in her mouth, the knife-blade on her neck was lifted slightly, replaced by hard stubby fingers.
‘That’s enough,’ he groaned, squeezing a handful of her hair.
Stepping back, he allowed his penis to slip out of her mouth. Without warning, he grabbed her elbow and pulled it upwards. Isserley didn’t have time to tense her muscles into a characteristic vodsel shape, and her arm bent freely at several joints, a zig-zag of unmistakably human angles. The hitcher did not appear to notice. This, more than anything else so far, filled Isserley with nauseous terror.
Once she was standing, the hitcher nudged her further along the car until she was against the bonnet.
‘Turn around,’ he said.
She obeyed, and he immediately grasped her green velvety trousers and tore them down to her knees with a single jolt.
‘Jesus,’ he growled from behind her. ‘You been in a car accident?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
For a heady moment she thought he was discouraged, but then she felt the flat of his hand on her back, pushing her forward onto the car’s bonnet.
Desperately, she searched for the right word, the word that might make him stop. It was a word she knew, but had only ever seen written – in fact, only this morning, a vodsel had spelled it out. She’d never heard it spoken.
‘Murky,’ she pleaded.
Both his hands were on the small of her back, the butt of the Stanley knife pressing against her spine. His penis was poking and shoving in between her thighs, straining for entry.
‘Please,’ she begged, suddenly inspired. ‘Let me show you. It will be better for you. I promise.’
Allowing herself to slump flat against the bonnet, her breasts and cheek squashed against the smooth metal, she laid her hands on the cheeks of her buttocks and pulled them apart. Her genitals, she knew, were buried forever inside a mass of ugly scar tissue caused by the amputation of her tail. But the scar lines themselves might resemble the cleft of a vodsel’s sex.
‘I don’t see nothing,’ he grunted.
‘Come closer,’ she urged him, turning her head painfully to watch his domed head looming near. ‘It’s there. Look.’
In a flash, exploiting the fact that she was balanced on the bonnet of the car, Isserley flung her arms backwards and upwards. She flung them like two whips, and her aim was precise. Two fingers of each hand plunged into each of the hitcher’s eyes, right up to the knuckles, right inside his hot clammy skull.